


Countdown

by Severa



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate realities explored in the context of Endgame-2023, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Ficlet, Gen, Oneshot, random thoughts put in text, with one small difference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-25 23:47:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18712162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severa/pseuds/Severa
Summary: If Doctor Strange had seen four victories instead of one, would it make a difference?





	Countdown

**Author's Note:**

> A friend and I were talking today about small changes that we would make to _Infinity War_ and _Endgame_ , and one of his minor tweaks was that instead of Doctor Strange seeing one successful reality, there were more. That way a countdown of sorts could happen leading up to Tony's death. Other alternative outcomes would get taken out of play throughout the course of the battle (or because of their choices beforehand), exponentially upping the stakes. So I wrote this self-indulgent nonsense.

“Strange, Strange – hey, you all right? You’re here with me.”

Stephen blinked the green and orange out of his eyes, disoriented, trembling around the edges the same way his hands shook every day. He saw Tony in threes at first, then six and twelve, until they finally bled back together into one.

“Hey, what was that?” asked the spider child, but it was Stark he was more aware of, grounding him there with his hand on his shoulder. It felt like he’d been balanced on a scalpel’s edge.

“I went forward in time… to view alternate futures. To see all possible outcomes…” he blinked and kept blinking, but the green haze of time magic barely thinned, “...of a common conflict.”

“How many did you see?” asked the Missouri moron.

“Fourteen million, six hundred and five.”

“How many did we win?” and _ding, ding, ding,_ the was the question that had to be asked.

Unfortunately, it was his job to give the answer.

“Four.”

* * *

Five years and one massive headache later, Doctor Strange opened his eyes – all of them – and surveyed the world that he’d been absent from. Watched the reflections of a hundred countries in the mirror fragments of another dimension, projected himself to each, and made a call for arms.

Thanos of 2014 would be arriving at that very moment, not knowing loss, not understanding the value of life and death, and he would make a mightier villain from the Titan they’d faced before. The Avengers had created their own worst enemy, raising the stakes so much higher than they had been before.

 _Go big or go home,_ said his pessimistic mind.  _Or die. Whichever._

* * *

Tony Stark found him in the heart of the battle and looked him dead in the eyes.

“You said four,” he yelled, blasting away creatures with the repulsors in his palms. Chitauri bled in violent bursts of purple blood, falling in heaps on top each other. “Is this one of them?”

Strange wanted to nod and tell him that yes, they’d done well, that the world was saved, but there was dread in his stomach. Preemptive grief and sorrow. Nothing was done until it was done. Tony still had a chance, but...

(Tony never stood a chance.)

“If I tell you that, it’ll never happen.”

“All right,” he said, nodding his head to the side. It looked like he was trying very hard not to think. “What’s the score, then?”

Now that was a question he could answer.

“Two shots left.”

Tony steeled his expression to hide his fear. Or maybe he had the same dread pitted in his stomach, too.

“Better than none.”

* * *

At the end of the line, there were no choices remaining.

The Sorcerer Supreme raised one trembling finger when the question wasn’t asked. Iron Man understood, in the way that martyrs do, what had to be done to save the world.

The third and final snap happened.

It was only right that he was there afterwards to say his goodbyes and pay his respects when Mrs. Stark – Mrs. Potts – took her daughter down to the lakeside and put her husband’s first artificial heart in the water. He expected the tears. The solemn gathering. What he had not expected were the questions left behind. The sadness in Steve Roger's eyes.

As the Stark women returned into their home, opening their doors for a quiet reception of friends and family, it was Steve who came up beside him and folded his hands. 

“Doctor.”

“Captain.”

The expected awkward silenced came and went. Stephen suffered through it with grace.

“Tony… he,” Steve paused and swallowed, trying to re-orient himself in a world he’d never been meant for. "He told me you said there were four outcomes. Four ways we could’ve won.”

“I did.” He rolled his shoulders back, standing up a little straighter. “But there's only ever one victory, Captain Rogers. What didn't happen doesn't matter.”

“But, uh,” It was strange, Strange thought, to see this man so uncomfortable. Distress didn't fit right on that carefully crafted face. “Was it always this?”

 _No_ , he knew, but the right way to answer a question wasn't always by telling the truth.

“It happened the way it was meant to be.”

* * *

In the four victories among fourteen million, six hundred and five failures, Tony Stark only died in the one that came to pass. The other three forgotten alternatives were, as the Sorcerer Supreme often said, irrelevant. They did not exist because they were not meant to be. It wasn't a subject that needed discussing.

But it was worth knowing who could’ve been victorious or what could’ve come to pass. What stories of redemption there were to find against the greatest evil the universe had ever faced. There were four ways to save the world. Four stories with characters who would have to find another story to tell, and one among them that never would. 

 

First:

If Clint had pulled the drawstring ten milliseconds sooner and aimed slightly more to his right, a stray rock from the incendiary explosion of his arrow would’ve hit Natasha in the head and knocked her unconscious.

Ultimately, she would do what no one else but Tony could’ve done: get close to Thanos in those final moments. Been sly and quick enough to rip the stones out of the gauntlet before his first-second attempt at a snap.

Except she would not take the task upon herself to dust him and his armies. She didn't have Tony's suit to combine the stones. She have the heart to leave everyone behind. As quick as she might want to trade her life for the sake of the world, she’d already lost at that game once. Clint wanted her to tell his wife and children that he loved them. She intended to do that.

So it was instead the sisters who brought down their Father. Gamora and Nebula, living in the patchwork bodies Thanos had forced on them, screaming through the blood and the pain that they’d spilled across the universe as they toppled him.

Carol Danvers would chase his fleeing armies through the galaxy and eliminate the Black Order with a smile on her face.

Tony and Natasha made it home.

 

Second:

If Nebula died in the snap, Rocket would accompany Rhodey to retrieve the power stone. Thanos would be none the wiser and remain where he belonged.

Thor would go alone to Asgard and face his fears. Fail in doing that, but his mother would make it right. He'd apologize to a Jane who hadn't dumped him yet.

In the end everyone but Natasha would make it home. There was no second war they had to fight.

 

Third:

If Thor did not bring Mjolnir home and instead dropped it at his mother’s feet, not wanting to risk taking his hammer from himself, he would die on the battlefield by Stormbreaker’s blade.

He would wake angry (and dead) in the belly of Hel. Lightning would flash across the realms, between the branches of Ygdrassil, and Heimdall himself would see him rage from his post at Valhalla’s gates. Hela would find him at the heart of a great storm in her kingdom, half burnt by the Eternal Flame but curious, wondering who’d stolen her revenge and then left this slop at her gate.

It would be Loki who found them screaming at each other, two dead royals fighting over nothing, and stopped the madness. Convinced them they’d be better off working together if Hela wished to have a Hel to rule at the end of Thanos’ long night. The dead could not exist if they’d never lived in the first place, after all, and he could lead them between the realms, living or otherwise.

It would be the army of the dead that rose up and crashed down on the Chitauri, Kree, and other unwanted wretches of the Sanctuary; Hela who speared Proxima Midnight and then tore Corvus in half for her to watch in her final breaths. Thor, son of Odin, Necrogod of Thunder, commanded the storm that struck down Cull; Loki, the rightful King of Jotunheim, turned the floodwaters to ice and trapped Ebony Maw’s skull between his daggers.

It would be Hela who stabbed a black blade in Thanos’ eye, growing it through the back of his skull and smiling at it split. He'd been a fool, struck still in his awe of Death. Thor would stop Tony and wrench him off his reckless path to steal back the gauntlet, watching in horror as his brother approached instead.

The Iron Gauntlet would be easy to remove from the massive, limp hand of his murderer, no longer a threat to his sanity or his life. But the threat of Hela's conquest would be their new greatest fear, something the brothers shared between them, as they had laid the stones of this perfect path for her genocidal rule. It was he who recognized the madness and hunger in her eyes when she let Thanos go. So Loki would take all six stones between his palms and make a wish; he would die one last time to resign her and her army back to Hel forever.

Again, the living Avengers could go home. But this time Thor could say goodbye.

 

And fourth:

There was Tony Stark.

He who was told not to waste his life. Who, with pain and stubbornness, driven with an outlandish sort of determination, resolved to do just that. Fifteen years ago he’d promised a good friend that he’d make his life worthwhile; it was in that moment that he sealed his fate and set his due.

It was always meant to be him. Not Nebula or Gamora, not Loki or Thor. Though those Thanos had tortured deserved the kill, it simply would not come to pass.

What was meant to be would always be.

And so it was.


End file.
